Please login to submit a screenshot

"It's turrican Jim but not as we know it!"

A different experience.

I found this game on a car boot stall, and my first impulse was to jump for joy. I loved the turrican series on the amiga and now I could have it on the Snes? Sadly though the game only vaguely resembled the turricans of days past, but after my initial let down I resolved to make the best of it and enjoy the game on it's own merrits. It certainly does have merrits, but set against those are a few rather nasty flaws, the question is ultimately, how does it balance out?

A rather crowded black hole.

The game's plot is actually one of it's better points. taking a leaf from it's amiga cousin, the game begins with a long commic strip style intro, but then continues the story from world to world, explaining why your going where your goinga major pluss in my book.

the game's intro explains that the evil forces of The Machine, a generally nasty person, have taken over a star system inside a black hole. The inhabitants of the system send a message out of the hole, requesting help, which is picked up by the Avalon, a ship full of generally benevolent people with robotic sutes. the Avalon despatches you (the nameless second person hero), to see what's going on and put a stop to it. Despite the fact that the plot writers obviously forgot to read Steven Hawkings tourist guide to black holes, it is still a nice plot and the ongoing story sequences contributeto the atmosphere of the game.

This black hole must've sucked in some good artists.

The graphics of the game are a major pluss, despite slight problems with using a single colour too much, the game world is realized in bright and stunning detail. One particular boss, the worm, who makes an entrance by charging mouth open towards the screen, is a particularly nice touch. A minor gripe I have with this game is that the backgrounds of many levels seem to be static, or constantly repeating. while this wouldn't usually be an issue for me, it does make the scrolling shooter levels slightly dull, and often I felt that I wasn't really getting anywhere.

In space, everyone can here aliens scream.

the sound effects to this game are fairly detailed, if a litle uneavenly spread out. While jumping on the head of one alien enemy will produce a most satisfying cry of pain, giant worms can slide noiselessly over sand at terrific speed, gas can spread soundlessly, and space ships just make a slight sliding sound once in a while. Your charactor's sound pallet is nice, and I was glad to see that this game kept the Turrican tradition of having voice samples each time you picked upa power up. there are also sounds for each weapon you acquire too. I do wish the programmers could have done more with the explosion sound effect, but sadly they didn't. All in all the sound is patchy.

Rock on!

the music to this game was quite honestly a disappointment. while it is generally reasonable at hitting the mood of whatever location your traveling through, it doesn't do much else. In the psudo-rock style seen in games ly Cybernator, the general arrangements of tunes are simply base and drums with comparatively litle melody in many of the tracks. While there are a couple of better put together peaces, such as the orchestral style intermission music, in general the music is simply a bland parody of what it could have been. turrican games have generally been famous for music, but this is one area where this one is sadly lacking.

Is this a game or a collection?

the game switches betwene several different styles of play. There are 2D platform sequences, 3D vehicle stages, a 2D water bike stage and even a top down Swiv style stage later in the game. My problem is that it seems the developers were so busy creating many different types of stage for yout to play, they didn't take the time to make them interesting. In the £3D vehicle stages, you have only one weapon, and only fight one type of enemy. Though the above standard music and smoothly scrolling background are exciting at first, they soon pawl when you realize that the background won't change. these stages swiftly turn from high speed fun to smooth scrolling boardom.the 2D flying stages suffer from similar problems, though thankfully the water bike does involve a litle exploring.

The main part of the game is supposed to be the 2D platformer action, but the gameplay here also feels like a rush job. the traditional Turrican weapons of the surround laser and wheel are present, but as the laser only freezes enemies for almost no time at all, and the wheel bounces miles after taking one hit, they are both fairly redundent. Your robotic sute also has a grpling cyber arm, which the programmers obviously liked sinse they included many levels that involved nothing but hanging onto ledges with it. the problem is however that you have almost no control over the arm, one press will fire it diagonally at a wall or ledge, and there you will stick. To climb all you need do is tap the grapple button repeatedly, inserting the odd jump here or there. While this certainly looks swish, it takes litle skill to master. Compared to the complex and versatile graple system of Super Metroid or Mega Man Zero 2, Turrican 2's graple system is merely button mashing, and an excuse to show off swirling backgrounds.

Your charactor's weapon system is one of the nicer features of the game, you have a choice of four weapons, all of which have different strengths and weaknesses, from the wide ranging but weak spread shot, to the narrow but highly damaging laser. the only problem with the weapon system is that the intensively one track mode of most of the levels means that you will need one weapon once only. the Rebounce weapon for example, is only really of use in the second level. where as the old Turrican games contained so many power ups you could almost choose your weapon at any time, this game feels as if your given a weapon for each situation and have to accomplish that particular puzle with it before picking up another, it's like Mega Man with only being aloud one weapon at a time.

Summation.

This is not a bad game, it can't hold a candleto the original Turrican games, accept maybe in graphics, but in general it's reasonable. I'd say it's worth having, but not worth paying too much for.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/02/05